Property Description
There are properties that have been maintained, and there are properties that have been built around a way of life.
Located at N45354 County Road E near Osseo, this Wisconsin farmstead brings together a comfortable country home, established agricultural improvements, multiple outbuildings, fruit trees, year-round water, and a collection of infrastructure that immediately makes you wonder what could be done here next.
At first glance, it feels like a familiar Wisconsin farmstead. Spend a little more time here, and a much bigger story begins to unfold.
At the center of the property is a traditional three-bedroom, one-and-a-half-bath country home that feels familiar in all the right ways.
The main level offers a large living room centered around a wood stove, main-floor laundry, and a primary bedroom with its own half bath. Upstairs are two additional bedrooms with large closets and a full bathroom. A full block-wall basement provides additional utility and storage space.
The home has also seen several practical updates. A new Amana furnace and central air conditioning were installed in 2024, with the existing boiler providing a secondary heat source. Steel roofing and siding, updated exterior doors, and a newer deck add to the improvements already completed.
Outside, the property begins to tell a bigger story.
A detached one-car garage is complemented by a larger three-car garage, providing space for vehicles, equipment, projects, and storage. A small granary and corn crib add some of the traditional character you’d expect from an established Wisconsin farmstead, while a milk house and loafing area are reminders that agriculture here was once more than just a backdrop.
Apple, pear, and plum trees are already established, providing the foundation of an orchard that could be maintained as it sits or expanded as part of a larger vision for the land.
The headwaters of Elk Creek originate here, providing year-round flowing water and another natural feature that adds to the character and potential of the property.
The home gives you a place to live. The land and improvements give you room to build something around it.
One of the most valuable parts of this property may be the infrastructure that isn’t immediately obvious from the road.
A separate purpose-built facility has its own well and septic system along with an office, bathroom, utility room, and walk-in cooler. Those improvements were put in place for a very specific reason, but they also create an interesting starting point for whatever comes next.
Maybe the next chapter continues in agriculture.
Maybe it’s specialty food production, an expanded orchard or market garden, livestock, a farm-to-table venture, workshop space, or another rural business concept. Or maybe someone simply sees a country property with serious utility—room for equipment, projects, gardens, animals, and the ability to put the existing buildings and infrastructure back to work.
Future agricultural, commercial, livestock, food-production, or other uses would remain subject to applicable zoning, licensing, and regulatory requirements. But someone has already invested considerable time and resources into creating much of the physical framework.
And there’s a reason all of it is here.
In 2020, this property became home to St. Isidore’s Dairy Farmstead Cheese.
What may initially look like another collection of Wisconsin farm buildings was developed into a small artisan cheese operation built around a much different philosophy than mass production.
Using raw milk from grass-fed Jersey cattle, the operation produced aged farmstead cheddar using traditional cheesemaking methods with roots reaching back centuries. The cheese was aged for a minimum of approximately two months, entered the wholesale market, and earned recognition for the product being created right here on the farm.
The story eventually reached well beyond the property itself, with St. Isidore’s and its farm-to-table approach featured by PBS Wisconsin.
That history explains the dedicated production facility, walk-in cooler, separate utilities, milk house, agricultural buildings, and other infrastructure found throughout the property.
Approximately $60,000 in cheesemaking equipment is associated with the former operation, with personal property negotiable. For someone interested in continuing or adapting the agricultural infrastructure, there’s considerably more here than an empty building and an idea.
But the next owner doesn’t have to make cheese.
What was created here proves something important about this property: the land and buildings can become the foundation for an idea.
Someone else already took this Wisconsin farmstead and built a business and lifestyle around what the property offered. The next owner gets to decide what their version of that looks like.
Continue an agricultural tradition. Develop a specialty crop or food venture. Expand the orchard and gardens. Bring animals back to the property. Put the buildings to work in an entirely different way. Or simply enjoy the home, land, water, and outbuildings as a country property with considerably more history and infrastructure than first meets the eye.
St. Isidore’s wrote one chapter here.
The home remains. The land remains. The infrastructure remains. The next chapter is wide open.